


Clutch

by izzyb



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzyb/pseuds/izzyb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joanna had nothing to say to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clutch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bether](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bether/gifts).



> Thanks to lullabymoon for the beta. Bether asked for, "If the author picks Joanna, there is absolutely no requirement to pair her off-- I just think it's cute when she crushes on Pavel but her being young and adorable with McCoy wrapped around her little finger is awesome, too." I really wanted to include more Pavel, by the way, but that's a completely different story. :)

Joanna was eleven years old and had a daddy she idolized somewhere in space, a daddy who had both feet firmly on the ground a few days ago when he’d sent her a video message while she was still in school. She’d checked it discreetly in the bathroom during advanced math after telling her teacher that she just _had_ to go (“it’s an emergency!”) when she felt the telltale vibration against her hip. The lesson had already started and Ms. Peterson hated it when her students missed any time away from her melodic voice, but Joanna was a good kid and rarely asked for anything, so she’d said yes without hesitation.

Jo had known those brownie points would come in handy someday.

The message had been brief, but Joanna played it three times anyway, tracing the outline of his face with her fingers, before reluctantly sticking him back in her pocket and returning to class. His words ran through her brain during the rest of the day, though, causing her to draw spaceships and hearts rather than listen to anything _ordinary_ her teachers had to say. Nothing compared to the promise he’d made: “See you very soon, Jo, as soon as the semester is over.”

When she got home, she dropped her bag, her sweater, her shoes in a trail on the way to the kitchen where she checked the digital calendar on the wall, scrolling through until she saw it on 17 May— _Leonard here_.

All she had to do was survive one more month.

Three days later, he was in space and Joanna spent every night for the week he was off planet on the second floor of their farmhouse peering through the telescope her mama had given her for her birthday two years ago. She thought that if she stayed up and kept watch, he would be okay and might just make it home.

Turns out it wasn’t her vigil that saved him, but the ingenuity of the Enterprise crew, including a seventeen-year-old who gave them the advantage against the Narada. _Seventeen_!

The more her daddy spoke in his many messages of the genius of Chekov, the steadiness of Spock, and the “goddamn hero complex” of Kirk, the more the empty feeling in her chest grew.

They were where she couldn’t be. And Pavel Chekov (she’d looked up his bio and knew so much about him) was the one closest in age to her, someone who should technically still be in high school, not seeing her father every day, eating meals with him, and joking with him in a way similar to how daddy joked with Jim Kirk.

Less than a year later, Joanna was packing for Cerberus for a cultural exchange program, one her mother had agreed to without consulting Leonard. This last subterfuge on Jo’s part guaranteed a “yes” and the signing of the appropriate paperwork. Jo was nothing if not thorough.

“You’re sure?” Jocelyn asked, stroking her hand down Jo’s hair, making her squirm. Jocelyn didn’t let her go, clutching her tighter to her instead, just to be contrary. Joanna gave in to the embrace, breathing in the scent of the freshly-laundered button-up shirt and a light flowery perfume that would always remind her of home.

"It’s a great opportunity, Mama—I’m going to meet so many interesting people and work on my science credits so that I can graduate early.” She hadn’t rehearsed that speech a dozen times or more. Not at all.

Jocelyn sighed and released her to stare out the window at the fall colors—a single leaf had blown into the kitchen through the open window and landed on the floor. Jocelyn didn’t notice it, but Jo was looking down and did—the orange tinge bright against the white tile.

“You’ve gone and grown up on my while I was distracted,” she said finally. “Come back to me, Jo. Come back safe and whole and…well, happy.”

On the shuttle from San Francisco to the space station where she was to meet her ship, sitting next to her newly-assigned “big sister,” Jo mulled over her words, realizing that her mother noticed more about her than Jo had thought.

She deliberately ignored the messages from her father on her brand spanking new PADD, as well as all the others since the first one that threatened her life and limb if she didn’t answer him back and “explain herself.” She had nothing to say to him.

*

He wished she would answer him.

Leonard McCoy leaned his head against the smooth paneling of the wall of his quarters, resisting the urge to punch it in frustration. Ten days. He hadn’t heard from her in ten days. Kirk had the decency to leave him to his misery instead of pushing socialization and drinking and bothering Spock with unnecessary questions about his childhood or exercising in the rec room, or goading Chapel into shaking her head at them, or whatever else the man deemed to be good distractions.

Sometimes one just wanted to wallow in one’s own worry.

The kicker was that he wasn’t sure if she was just ignoring him or if it was something worse, something that Kirk, and through him, Admiral Pike, did not pick up in their influential presence on the information lines. Yes, he knew that many (mainly Jim and Christine) would say that ten days was not all that long, but it was when he hadn't even heard she was going off planet _and_ it was rare to go very long without some sort of silly message.

His gut told him it was bad, that the dangers of space were real. His brain told him to shut the hell up and give her this freedom, this brief spot of independence to prove herself. Clearly that was what she was trying to do. Either prove that she could survive on her own, or else attempt to drive her father to an early grave.

Perhaps a little of both.

He’d give her a few months or so. And then he was tracking her down and welding a PADD to her hand so that she would _have_ to communicate with him.

One term of the exchange school, he told himself and ignored the fingernails digging into his palms. He could give her that.

*

Joanna sat in the dark on her bunk and stroked her finger up and down the glowing screen of her PADD. Cerberus had been interesting so far, but she longed for home and her mama’s cooking, especially since the food here had grown more and more meager in the past few days (“delayed shipments,” they said when the more outspoken students complained). The only information she was able to receive through the interplanetary channels were text messages, which she was forced to download from a console to read later rather than beam directly to her device.

She’d only received three messages in the month since she’d arrived and all from her mother. Her father was suspiciously silent.

Not that she had encouraged communication. That was the point, right? Scrolling over the options on the side brought her to the images mama had stored for her before gifting her with the PADD—grinning at age three with chocolate frosting on her nose; chasing the dog her dad had named Little Brother (for reasons she’d not understood at the time) through the backyard at age six, her too-large shorts almost falling off her butt; riding her daddy’s shoulders at age seven to better see the Christmas parade because he just _knew_ how much she loved the elves and the bells on their funny hats.

Despite her resolve, despite her plans, despite all the resentment she could feel building in her stomach, Joanna started composing a letter.

She stopped before it was complete and threw the PADD on the bed, cursing herself and wiping her eyes.

No.

*

“Hey, Bones. Bones!”

Leonard blearily cracked one eyelid to see that not only was Jim waking him up in the middle of an REM cycle, but he was also _in his quarters_ shaking him awake in the middle of a REM cycle.

“Go away, I don’t want to work out with you,” he mumbled and attempted to turn over and bury himself under his pillow.

He could hear Jim’s snorted laugh under his breath and cursed him for being so damn annoying, especially because he still wouldn’t leave. “No—I’m not dragging you off to run. It’s important. You have a video comm—Lieutenant Uhura said she can only hold the line for a few minutes.”

His heart now pounding in his ears, McCoy shot up. “Jo?”

“I don’t know. You can take it at your console in here.” Jim’s voice was gentle, the low tones the same as when he attempted to soothe someone before delivering the punch of bad news. McCoy had heard that voice often after Narada.

It was day forty-five of Leonard’s attempt at giving Joanna some space. Goddamn stupid idea, that.

“This is McCoy.”

*

He watched her eat every bite of the soup—mama’s recipe, he said, to make her feel more at home. Joanna pretended to ignore how bright his eyes were as he stared at the spoon, at her, down at the table. How strange it was to be the whole center of his attention again.

She was grateful they were surrounded by people in the ship's mess, instead of alone in his room, or even stuck in sickbay. Jo wasn’t sure what to say to him except, “Sorry, daddy, for not talking to you, not telling you about the problems there, not answering your messages.”

Sorry for being an emotional teenage mess.

She wanted to say it, but she was still _angry_ \--the heat of it burned like a fire and made it hard to swallow the chicken and noodle soup, even though it was the best thing she’d eaten since she’d left Earth. She wanted to be left alone and cry, yet also be drawn into his lap like she was a little girl again. The conflicting emotions confused her.

So she said nothing.

“It’s all right Jo. You don’t have to talk about it. I’m just—“ He stopped and ran a hand through his hair. “Glad to see you.” His communicator sounded and he cursed, then apologized to her. She resisted a grin at the familiarity of it all. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

She watched him as he spoke to whoever needed him, probably the captain, or Nurse Chapel, or a whole host of other people who regularly needed to speak to the CMO. He was a busy man and good at his job, mostly because he cared. Jo could see that now, see that he was still using that big heart he used to share only with her.

Not that she had to like it, but still that’s what it was.

When he was once more sitting across from her, picking up her soup bowl to make sure she’d finished every drop, Joanna gave up on ignoring him and raised her eyes to meet his. “Maybe we could, you know, watch an old vid or something? If you have time...” She let it trail off.

“Sure, Jo. I’d like that,” he answered, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

The anger she’d held on to was suspiciously subdued as they walked out of the mess together, her daddy telling her a story of that one time Yeoman Rand discovered Jim’s dinosaur figurine collection and how red he’d turned.


End file.
